This Time Last Fall

This first full day of Fall feels nothing like it, but I know cooler days will yield to long walks at sunset and hot tea sipped under blankets. The place where I live now, where I've always at least half-lived, isn't situated in an area conducive to the kind of walks I'm talking about though. Around here, if you start wandering and plan to be gone for a while, the only things you'll really see are all the things you've already seen...and then you'll have to see them all again on the way back!

No, the walks I'm talking about have the potential to turn into surrealist dreamscapes that meander between the precious and the absurd, but somehow nothing is surprising. Instead, everything makes you smile: the people who barely see you, the wind that makes you push your hands deeper into your pockets and wish you had a scarf, the scent of colder weather on its way...

I used to take a lot of these walks when I was still at school, when I should have been doing other things or after I'd successfully submitted these things to their respective professors. Saturdays were good days for long walks; no one ever seemed to be rushing about, including me, but there always seemed to be something happening.

One of these Saturdays I set out in a light jacket just as the sun was starting to droop in the sky, just as its blinding face appeared around the edge of my windows, beckoning me to get out of its way. Dylan was singing "I Was Young When I Left Home" on repeat in my head as I walked out into the street, and hearing it made the twilight a little bit dimmer, my heart a little heavier, and my throat a touch tighter.

The beauty of Nature inevitably breaks my heart, solely because of its loveliness. I know it will change too soon, and I regret my inability to bottle it, to imprison it in my pocket, knowing that even that would never be enough, nor would it last; one Fall I kept a red maple leaf in the pocket of my jacket, but by December it was dust.

Back on the street, I let my feet putter to wherever they saw fit, fully confident of their abilities. Somewhere on Hitt Street I walked past a haphazardly parked car with the back door open. No one was in sight, no one was rushing between the car and an apartment or a storefront, and there were no keys in the ignition.

Rejoining the crowd on Ninth Street, I witnessed the behind-the-scenes rushing about of a Bat Mitzvah celebration. How did I recognize this Jewish happening you ask? Ah, well...the marquee at the Missouri Theater clued me in.

Turning the corner I ran into my first wedding couple outside the Methodist church, where they were about to get into their getaway car. I didn't see anyone from the wedding party, and so I must have been the only one to witness their escape! They didn't see me, but I'm sure they were OK with our sudden complicity.

Coming out of Peace Park, near the journalism school, I crossed paths with my second newly-wedded couple. They too were unaccompanied by attendants or photographers, holding hands. She was looking down, smiling to herself, immersed in indescribable happiness. Chin up, he was facing forward, ready to take on the world. I smiled at him, but I'm not sure what I meant by it. Perhaps I was being conspiratorial, or mischievous, or maybe just grateful for being welcomed into their reverie for a moment. Anyway, I couldn't help noticing he looked younger than I am.

A few steps past the couple I noticed a sign for some sort of nerd party taking place in one of the classroom buildings. There were people coming and going, dressed in Medieval costumes. The sign outside that had caught my eye just said "Troll," but I assumed they were related. I wasn't intrigued enough to investigate, however.

There were people playing football on the quad, of course, looking just like they were part of a photo shoot for university recruiting literature, but for once I wasn't cynical about the scene. Indifferent in the face of school spirit, I instead appreciated the stillness of the season and all the serenity it holds...and scatters as it moves along toward winter.

I returned home with stinging cheeks, a runny nose, and hair that smelled like I'd spent the last hour at a bonfire (my favorite). I made pumpkin soup and had it with chamomile tea and honeyed toast from a homemade loaf of bread, sitting with Sam while she worked on an art project. I was sad that my walk was over but happy to be warm and joking around with my best friend ("This honey bear is so damn happy!"). But even then I knew days like that and shared moments like those would be over too soon...

Every Chorus Was Your Name

Beards and lively stomp sections: these are just a couple good things about American music in general and this band in particular.

Direct from Wayne Coyne

"Say yes, motherfuckers.  Say yes to life.  Don't wait for happiness to find you.  Make your own happiness now.  Say yes to living...  Give love.  To love is not a waste."
-9/18/10

Manifesto: Art and Identity

"Writing is like being in love.  You never get better at it or learn more about it.  The day you think you do is the day you lose it.  Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world.  It's ongoing.  It has neither a beginning nor an end.  You don't have to worry about learning things.  The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it."

                                                                                                     -James Lee Burke

People always ask me--people I know, friends of my parents, strangers upon introduction--where I work.  Before I graduated from college, the question had been, "What's your major?" or "What are you studying?"  My response was then followed with, "So you're going to be a teacher?"  Well, no...not exactly.

I resent the work question because it's the wrong one.  Or maybe it's the correct question to be asking, at least in the minds of those who ask it because career choice usually defines your place in society, which helps others align themselves around you.  But personal identity is so important to me, and I don't want to be defined solely by the way I make my money.  I sometimes wonder if the importance I do place on identity is a bit unnatural, but when people ask "Where do you work?" or "What do you do?" I don't want them to reduce my identity to that of a waitress, which is basically what my current job has become.  The question I'd rather be answering is, "Who are you?"

When I was playing in bands, I always felt like a bit of an imposter.  I enjoyed playing music and some of my favorite memories come from that period of my life, but I was just getting by.  It wasn't my purpose, my vision to write songs.  This was my brother's identity.  He has the natural talent and the discipline to cultivate it.  I had the same approach to music as I did to my schoolwork: I was pretty good at what I was doing, but I did most of my practicing at the last minute, sometimes in the minutes before going onstage.  Going to band practice always made my nervous because I was unprepared and knew that I was no good at improvisation;  I felt the same uneasiness before my "Law in Classical Athens" class.

Even so, I got a kick out of telling people I was in a band when they asked what I did.  It was nice having a label to fall back on: "I'm a musician.  I'm a bass player.  Yeah, it is cool."  But my life has really taken on a different look since then, with my focus becoming much clearer, and I'm happier now that I've cut out the parts that weren't really me, the visions that weren't my own.  People ask me if I miss playing music, and I think they're surprised when I tell them no, that I really don't think about getting back at it.  [OK, sometimes I do miss it, but I know myself well enough now to admit that I don't have the discipline or the drive to do it well.]  The fact that I could discard that part of my identity is further proof that it wasn't really my thing, just like softball wasn't really my thing, or journalism, or Teach for America, or pastry school, or...

I'm restless by nature, and this little quirk of mine makes it hard to really follow through on anything, particularly projects that require a lot of focus or slow and steady determination.  This could be a major explanation for the inability of certain interests to really take hold.  Maybe.  I can think of only one interest that never fails to thrill me and keep me coming back and that thing is writing, the act and the art.  I started my first novel when I was seven, and even though I only wrote about two and a half pages then, I tried again at ages nine and twelve with different ideas.  I go through some periods of relative inactivity, but I always return, ready for more.  It's taken me a while to learn, and I'm continually learning, sometimes to my chagrin, about discipline and persistence, so I suppose it's a good thing I'm still young; I have plenty of time to write my ten-years-in-the-making first novel, or what have you.

If someone asked me today who I am, I wouldn't say that I'm a lost 20-something, a sister and daughter, a Midwesterner of Irish descent, a recent college graduate, a traveler, or the last born.  I would say that I'm a writer, and I would have no apprehension in doing so.  It wouldn't feel like a lie or an almost-truth.  I don't see it as my career and don't know that I ever will, but that's exactly why it's the appropriate answer: my identity will not be defined by money.  Writing has been the one constant on my vast list of interests and ambitions, and for all the ways its presence has changed and will continue to change in my life, it's not going anywhere.

The problem with giving yourself a tangible identity, though, which is exactly what I'm doing when I call myself a writer, is that words and labels elicit different images for different people.  Words are just symbols after all.  I am many things, all at the same time, but I know the words to use to make others understand the basics, even if they might miss the point.  When I say, "I'm a writer" people still may only see me as self-indulgent and proceed to ask how I intend to make a living, but maybe someone sometime will realize that I write because I can't imagine not writing.  I can't go a day without stumbling upon inspiration or without thinking in the narrative voice, always composing in my head.

I will never stop learning from writing, and I don't want to.  I don't want to reach a point where I feel like a machine creating a product.  It will always trip me up and make me want to pull my hair out, but it will never let me down or stop amazing me.  I'm in love with writing, which means that a lot of times I hate it, but I always come back to it, because it allows me to see myself with clarity, my identity on display for anyone else who's paying attention.

Dear Nostalgia,

Fuck you. You ruin all the good music.

Making Memories

Sometimes my memories seem more like dreams, or maybe all of living is really dreaming. I live most of the day inside my head, reenacting improvised scenes that didn't last long enough, assuming a character who is nearly forgotten to me now.

Today I can be 18 again, at Ziggy's farm, drinking my first bourbon(s), eating Colby Jack cheeseburgers at three in the afternoon. Then back to the barn we'd head for more music making, and after the sun set we'd sit around a bonfire, passing a bottle of Stone Hill red back and forth between us--but mostly just between Dan and me--dreaming up the days ahead, making plans.

I was the first to bed that night, just as the sun was coming up. A few hours later I awoke in a king sized bed with my brother an arm's length away from me, feeling sick and ill at ease.

Meg arrived in the morning (afternoon?), like Kerouac visiting Burroughs in New Orleans. She videotaped Jeff on the dock, on the boat, on the phone. Inside, we watched the World Cup, in disbelief about Zidane, and I felt like I was watching something from another planet, feeling more like a citizen of Riddle than of the world.

Was this one weekend? Or have I wrongly recalled a string of weekends, years apart, a pre-production weekend plus a post-production one? Was that the weekend we watched Spinal Tap on the side of the barn? Does it matter? Who can impose rules on the unconscious?

Or maybe none of this really happened.